A business professor is taking the Virginia Lottery to court, seeking $85 million in reimbursement for defective scratch-off tickets.

A lawsuit by Washington and Lee University professor Scott Hoover seeks reimbursement for purchasers of an estimated 26.5 million tickets over the past five years. He claims the tickets had no chance of winning the top prize promised on them.

John Fishwick, an attorney for Hoover, said the suit was filed Friday in Richmond Circuit Court.

After Fishwick gave notice of a possible lawsuit earlier this month, Lottery officials said they were checking to ensure that each scratch-off game had top prizes available.

Hoover said that in popular games the Lottery had issued new shipments of tickets, but had not pulled tickets from old shipments after all the top prizes were awarded.

-- The Associated Press